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Ukraine Invasion Day 223: ex-ambassador to Germany tells Elon Musk to 'diplomat-off' [1]
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Date: 2022-10-03
Elon Musk reminds us that he still hasn’t bought Twitter which doesn’t yet distract us from the phony annexation of four Ukrainian oblasts, none of which are under total Russian control. Nuclear weapons seem even less likely to be deployed even as no Russian counteroffensive has emerged.
In his latest address, Zelenskiy dismissed as a “farce” Russia’s annexation of Ukrainian territory, which includes Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk and Luhansk provinces. Declining to mention Vladimir Putin by name, he said “someone somewhere” had recently held what he called “pseudo-referendums”.
“This is obviously related to the war blunders, which are becoming harder to hide. The Kremlin is looking for scapegoats,” said a former Russian defence ministry official who has worked with Zhuravlyov. “The pressure on the commander of the Russian armed forces, Valery Gerasimov, will only increase,” the former defence ministry official added.
In a sign of turbulence inside Russia’s army command, the head of the western military district was reportedly sacked on Monday in the wake of the recent defeats. The news outlet RBC said Col-Gen Alexander Zhuravlyov had been fired. His district is one of five that make up Russia’s armed forces. The move follows criticism over the weekend by Chechnya’s president, Ramzan Kadyrov, of Valery Gerasimov, Putin’s chief of the general staff, over the loss of Lyman.
Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to Ukraine’s interior ministry, posted a photo of Ukrainian soldiers posing with their flag draping a golden statue of an angel. He said it was the village of Mikhailivka, about 20km beyond their previous position. The next apparent Ukrainian target was the city of Beryslav, on the banks of the Dnieper.
On Monday, the Russian military acknowledged that Kyiv’s forces had broken through in the Kherson region. It said the Ukrainian army and its “superior tank units” had managed to “penetrate the depths of our defence” around the villages of Zoltaya Balka and Alexsandrovka.
Russia no longer has full control of any of the four provinces of Ukraine it says it annexed last week after Ukrainian troops reportedly advanced dozens of kilometres in Kherson province in the south of the country and made additional gains in the east.
"Those who suggest that Ukraine give up its people and land - ostensibly in order not to hurt Putin's offended ego or to save Ukraine from suffering - should not cover with the word "peace" the words "Let the Russians kill and rape thousands more innocent Ukrainians and capture
Those people are part of Ukraine - the will of the people of these regions was expressed in 1991 and all voted to be part of Ukriane. It is only the democratic institutions of the sovereign Ukrainian state that can make a decision to offer another vote. Have you asked them? pic.twitter.com/IxQWxqipPw
Musk also posted a poll asking Twitter users to weigh in on his suggestions. After a majority of respondents voted against the ideas, he blamed a “bot attack” for skewing the results.
“Fuck off is my very diplomatic reply to you,” Melnyk said in a Tweet. “The only outcome [is] that now no Ukrainian will EVER buy your f…ing tesla crap. So good luck to you [sic].”
In his tweets, Musk added that a peace deal should include a recognition that Crimea, which Russia illegally annexed in 2014, is “formally part of Russia.” Ever since Russia invaded Crimea and conducted its sham referenda in Crimea, the United States and other allies have recognized the region as a part of Ukraine.
The Russian fascist regime is ecstatic about Elon Musk's intervention on their behalf. With his moral idiocy on Twitter, Musk amplified propaganda of the unjust aggressor and diverted attention from losses incurred by Russians on the battlefront where they are invading Ukraine.
x Source: General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine operational information at 18:00 on 3 October 2022 pic.twitter.com/JGQc9la6R1 — Michael MacKay (@mhmck) October 3, 2022
Special Edition on Changes in the Russian Information Space Following the Russian Defeat in Lyman
This campaign assessment special edition focuses on dramatic changes in the Russian information space following the Russian defeat around Lyman and in Kharkiv Oblast and amid the failures of Russia’s partial mobilization. Ukrainian forces made continued gains around Lyman, Donetsk Oblast, and have broken through Russian defensive positions in northeastern Kherson Oblast. Those developments are summarized briefly and will be covered in more detail tomorrow when more confirmation is available.
The Russian defeat in Kharkiv Oblast and Lyman, combined with the Kremlin’s failure to conduct partial mobilization effectively and fairly are fundamentally changing the Russian information space. Kremlin-sponsored media and Russian milbloggers – a prominent Telegram community composed of Russian war correspondents, former proxy officials, and nationalists – are grieving the loss of Lyman while simultaneously criticizing the bureaucratic failures of the partial mobilization. [1] Kremlin sources and milbloggers are attributing the defeat around Lyman and Kharkiv Oblast to Russian military failures to properly supply and reinforce Russian forces in northern Donbas and complaining about the lack of transparency regarding the progress of the war. [2]
Some guests on heavily-edited Kremlin television programs that aired on October 1 even criticized Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to annex four Ukrainian oblasts before securing their administrative borders or even the frontline, expressing doubts about Russia’s ability ever to occupy the entirety of these territories. [3] Kremlin propagandists no longer conceal their disappointment in the conduct of the partial mobilization, frequently discussing the illegal mobilization of some men and noting issues such as alcoholism among newly mobilized forces. [4] Some speaking on live television have expressed the concern that mobilization will not generate the force necessary to regain the initiative on the battlefield, given the poor quality of Russian reserves. [5]
The Russian information space has significantly deviated from the narratives preferred by the Kremlin and the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) that things are generally under control. The current onslaught of criticism and reporting of operational military details by the Kremlin’s propagandists has come to resemble the milblogger discourse over this past week. The Kremlin narrative had focused on general statements of progress and avoided detailed discussions of current military operations. The Kremlin had never openly recognized a major failure in the war prior to its devastating loss in Kharkiv Oblast, which prompted the partial reserve mobilization. [6]
The Russian MoD has consistently focused on exaggerating Russian success in Ukraine with vague optimistic statements while omitting presentations of specific details of the military campaign. The daily Russian MoD briefing has claimed to capture the same villages more than once as ISW and independent investigators have observed, and the Russian MoD rarely releases photographic evidence confirming claims of Russian advances. [7]
The Russian MoD has sought to impose this kind of narrative on the milbloggers as well. Advisor to the Russian Defense Minister Andrey Ilnitsky called on Russian journalists and milbloggers on May 26 to refrain from presenting detailed coverage of the war and to avoid publishing negative information that could help the West infiltrate the Russian information space and win the “hybrid war.” [8]
The milbloggers largely disregarded the MoD’s directives, and Putin seemed to support them in this disobedience, rewarding them with a lengthy personal meeting on June 17. [9] Most milbloggers have continued to report Russian battlefield setbacks and to criticize failures in the partial mobilization, often in strident tones. Putin has not apparently punished any major milbloggers for their outspokenness or allowed others to punish them. He has, however, kept their critiques off of the mainstream Russian airwaves. Kremlin mouthpieces on federally-owned TV channels had continued to puppet the MoD and Kremlin lines for the most part—until the partial mobilization.
The Kremlin’s declaration of partial mobilization exposed the general Russian public to the consequences of the defeat around Kharkiv and then at Lyman, shattering the Kremlin’s efforts to portray the war as limited and generally successful. The Russian defeat around Lyman has generated even more confusion and negative reporting in the mainstream Russian information space than had the Russian withdrawals from Kyiv, Snake Island, or even Kharkiv. The impact of Lyman is likely greater because Russians now fear being mobilized to fix problems on the battlefield. An independent Russian polling organization, the Levada Center, found that more than half of respondents said that they were afraid that the war in Ukraine could lead to general mobilization, whereas the majority of respondents had not voiced such concerns in February 2022. [10] Russians also likely see that the Kremlin is executing the current partial mobilization – which was supposed to be a limited call-up of qualified reservists – in an illegal and deceptive manner, which places more men at the risk of being mobilized to reinforce collapsing frontlines.
Putin relies on controlling the information space in Russia to safeguard his regime much more than on the kind of massive oppression apparatus the Soviet Union used, making disorder in the information space potentially even more dangerous to Putin than it was to the Soviets. Putin has never rebuilt the internal repression apparatus the Soviets had in the KGB, Interior Ministry forces, and Red Army to the scale required to crush domestic opposition by force. Putin has not until recently even imposed the kinds of extreme censorship that characterized the Soviet state. Russians have long had nearly free access to the internet, social media, and virtual private networks (VPNs), and Putin has notably refrained from blocking Telegram even though the platform refused his demands to censor its content and even as he has disrupted his people’s access to other platforms. The Russian information space has instead relied on journalists and TV talk-show guests to enforce coerced self-censorship, especially after the Kremlin adopted a law that threatens Russians with up to 15 years in jail for “discrediting the army.” [11] The criticism on Russian federal TV channels of military failings and failings of the partial mobilization effort, especially following the defeat at Lyman, is thus daring and highly unusual for the Kremlin’s propaganda shows. It has brought the tone and tenor of some of the milblogger critiques of Russia’s performance in the war into the homes of average Russians through official Kremlin channels for the first time.
www.understandingwar.org/...
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